This Application is a 371 of PCT/US99/05821 filed Mar. 18, 1999, which claims priority to Provisional Application No. 60/106,352 filed Oct. 30, 1998.
This invention is directed to a disk drive device; more specifically, it is directed to a disk drive device which has the characteristic that data can be sent and received to and from a computer through a PCMCIA port.
Various types of disk drive devices that read and write information on a rotating disk medium have been developed and used for some time as computer data storage devices. Widely used magnetic disk drive devices are generally available in two broad categoriesxe2x80x94removable and fixed. In particular, removable cartridge disk drives read and write information magnetically on a disk that is enclosed in a removable protective case. By contrast, fixed disk drives read and write information magnetically on a fixed disk that is permanently fixed in the data storage device.
Fixed disk drives are used as the principal data storage devices of computers, since they typically have data transmission speeds and storage capacities that are several orders of magnitude greater than removable disk drives. Obviously however, fixed disk drives have the drawback, as compared with removable disk drives, that the disk cannot be easily moved to another computer. As a result, it is ordinarily desirable to provide computers with both a removable disk drive along with a fixed disk drive and most desktop computers have both.
In recent years, however, mobile computers of very small sizes, such as handheld, notebook and lap-top computers, have become widely used. Because space in these computers is a premium, removable cartridge disk drives are attached externally or not at all. Furthermore, in such small computers, external removable cartridge drives are very inconvenient for mobile use. Hence, many of these types of computers do not have disk drives, but rather use IC card based storage media via a PCMCIA port on the computer. However, since IC cards use semiconductor memories, storage capacities are small, and costs are high. These drawbacks have made it difficult for such computers to use programs and data that have large storage requirements.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a disk drive device that is portable and that can be easily attached to and detached from computers in the manner of as IC card.
In order to meet the aforementioned need, this invention provides a disk drive device of the type that accepts a removable disk cartridge. The disk drive device comprises a spindle motor for rotating, a disk medium within the disk cartridge; a head arm; a read/write head coupled to the head arm for writing and reading information on the disk medium, a head moving means, which operates the head arm; and a control circuit board on which electronic parts are mounted; a protective case which is formed from an upper case and a lower case, the protective case having a form such that it can be inserted into and removed from the PCMCIA port of a computer; and an input/output connector placed on one end of the protective case in order to connect it with a PCMCIA connector when it is inserted into the aforementioned PCMCIA board. In the disk drive device, the spindle motor is coupled to the protective case. Preferably, the bearings of the spindle motor are also coupled to the protective case.
The protective case is preferably formed from a sheet material, preferably by pressing. An attachment hole is placed in the bottom surface of the protective case for attachment of the bearings. To that end, projecting parts with a length almost equal to the thickness of the protective case are formed in the bearings, and the projecting part is inserted into the attachment hole in order to fix the bearings to the protective case. The attachment hole may have a flange attached to the bottom surface of the protective case around the attachment hole. Preferably, the flange is formed by burring the protective case.
The bearings are preferably formed from an oil-containing sintered alloy. Moreover, the bearings are preferably fixed to the protective case by inserting them into the attachment hole under pressure.